Automotive-Recycling

Every end-of-life car is a source of raw material. During the today recycling process, polymers end up along with dust, slivers of metal and textile fluff in the non-metalic shredder residue (shredder-light-fraction). This mixes the plastics so indiscriminately that it has never been possible to seperate them into the individual types again and they are therefore used as reducing agents in blast furnaces. Toyota Europe, SiCon GmbH and Fraunhofer IVV addressed this issue in a pilot project (2006 - 2007).

By financing the project-network “ForCycle” with € 3 million the Bavarian state government supports the development of innovative recycling processes with a main interest on metals, composites, building materials and biogenic polymers over a period of 3 years (2014 – 2016). In a subproject the CreaSolv® Process is explored as gentle separation of metal-plastic compounds and their individual recovery is studied.

Less than 1/3 of plastic packaging waste is currently recycled due to technological and economic limitations, thus considering plastic as a single use commodity and the waste as a (financial) burden instead of a “resource”. In its new “Plastic Strategy1)” the European Commission set out a vision that includes cost-effective recycling, larger recycling capacities and a more integrated plastic value chain. The MultiCycle2) project is aimed at stopping resource depletion, land-filling and incineration in regards to plastic waste streams of the packaging and automotive sector. It will start on 1 November 2018 and last until 31 October 2021.